App development, design, and promotion, tips, tricks and thoughts to help you make awesome apps.

Thursday, October 06, 2016

All this month, I'm taking some time each day to explore (and document) things that are related to UWP development that I haven't fully investigated or used before. While doing it over lunch each day I'm calling it #UWPLunch.

With Microsoft doing less and less in terms of manufacturing and promoting phones running Windows 10 Mobile, many have been asking if it's a dead platform.

Obviously, it's something I think about.

Today I was at Microsoft's Transform conference. Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) gave the closing talk. During this he described Windows 10 as an operating system for a person across all the devices they use.

Phones are the most used and most personal devices people interact with. For Windows10 to not be a part of that would be ridiculous and I still believe that Microsoft can't abandon phones entirely.
No, they'll never be the market leader.
Yes, your mobile (phone) app strategy will need to consider building for Android and iOS. (Xamarin is, of course, a great way to do this.)
No, I don't know anything about any upcoming announcements. (And if I did I couldn't tell you.)

If you've developed for UWP or Windows Phone in the past, much of what you've learnt is hopefully still relevant regardless of the platform you're building for and UWP apps still run on desktop, Xbox, IoT, SurfaceHub, and HoloLens too.